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      Chapter Two Generating an archive

      Contents

      Chapter objectives

      After reading this chapter, you should know:

      The range of possible sources of material to conduct research on is massive and potentially never-ending. We now have a large range of different technologies that allow you to generate, access, store and engage with a vast array of materials. Among many things, the technologies of the printing press, camera, photocopier, audio recorder, video camera, computer, smartphone and the Internet are all key to contemporary research practice. These mundane and relatively invisible technologies both enable us to conduct our research and, perhaps more importantly, now direct the focus of our research.

      Sources of ‘data’

      To put it very simply, we could divide your possible sources of ‘data’ into two categories: data that you have to generate and data that already exists. By that I mean to contrast, say, a research interview you conduct on the topic of genetic disease with, say, a newspaper article on genetic disease. The newspaper article, on the face of it, exists independently of your action whereas the research interview exists only due to your action. So we could divide the potential sources of data into these two categories: researcher-generated and already existing data. However, this assumes that you are somehow more ‘active’ with the former category and reasonably ‘passive’ or ‘neutral’ in relation to the latter. In both cases your actions are utterly central in producing the materials as ‘data’. In both cases you have to actually discover it, physically collect it, make decisions about what materials you are going to gather and what materials you are going to ignore. Irrespective of the actual form of the materials – video recordings of television programmes, audio files of focus groups, newspaper articles, screen shots of web discussion groups or photocopies of academic journal articles – you have made certain choices. Importantly, you have decided to call this specific ensemble of materials, which you collected together, your ‘data’.

      So where does that leave us? In reports of research, some things are named as ‘data’ and some activities are named as ‘data collection’; other things and activities do not hold the same status. In one project I worked on, the two ‘official’ sources of data were:

      However, the findings of the research are also the product of the engagement with the following materials: